Moral:
Growing up in a country that was occupied by an enemy, in wartime conditions, you learn several things very quickly. One is that you have to survive, not only survive as an individual, but survive as a family. Secondly, it gives you an appreciation for the temporary nature of life. In a chaotic situation there is no future; future is what comes the next day. And the third thing is that it makes you think about our history, the past. These three items, in my mind, are the central thoughts of Confucianism. Confucius travelled to different kingdoms. He was trying to convince the leaders of those little kingdoms that they should not with narrow vision just concentrate all their own wealth in a little city. He taught that one king ought to talk with his neighbour, not to fight him, but to reason with him. Confucius promoted the idea that people ought to get together to have an orderly society, to be devoted to the people so that everyone can have a better life. The essence of the teachings of Confucius is that there are things you must have in order for a stable, developing, flourishing civilized society to survive. These are called golden rules and it turns out that every major religion in the world has the same set of golden rules. One need not be a superbeing or supernatural being to know this. These are the unspoken rules or universal rules that each civilization at certain times will realize because they are fundamental. For example, you can't have a society where everybody kills everybody else and you can't have a society where everybody only does things for their own individual greed.
Formation:
Confucius knew that self-restraint is not easy; the human nature is not designed for self-restraint. So what Confucius was trying to do was to give people a sociological reason why they should have self-restraint. In other words, he says that you should not kill people because you are a member of society, and the person that you kill is also a member of society, and society belongs to all the people. It is not just your society; you are not the society, you are part of society, and the other person is also part of society. Therefore, you two should get together and stop killing each other. The end result is to achieve a stable, peaceful, harmonious society, while society is growing. Because Confucius believed that the tendency for doing the wrong thing is instinctive, and doing the right thing needs to be taught, he emphasized education. The purpose of education is to cultivate moral values in people's minds and to encourage people to do the right thing. Only through education can people in society learn to live with each other in peace and harmony and support and help each other for the benefit of all, creating social prosperity and happiness. The teachings of Confucius are embodied in the Four Books and Five Classics. The Four Books are the Great Learning, the Doctrine of Mean, the Analects, and Mencius.